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January frost rubs
its hide on the cactus
& pads off by dawn.
What is left behind
is a dark freeze, a patch
of dead flesh that thaws
even in winter sun,
& always animal height
from the ground, so that
as the decay is bled out--
drip by drip--no creature
does not stop to smell,
to see flesh run black.
This is an ancient necrosis;
it repeats night after night--
freeze, blacken, drip, thaw--
until nothing that grows
isn’t part dead inside.
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